Being Human: Prick Us, We Bleed; Poison Us, We Die

Episode 306: “What’s Blood Got to Do with It”

[Photos: Phillipe Bosse/Syfy]

Wow. This week’s episode of Being Human starts with Sally and Max cooking in the kitchen, and by cooking, I mean that first scene would be soft-core porn if the actors weren’t more or less dressed. French Toast has never looked so good.

Every happy moment on this show, of course, ends quickly. Sally’s brother Robbie shows up at the front door as the new landlord, so Sally hides from him, then more or less shoos Max out of the house to counsel with her roommates. Three smart (well, at least witty) roomies, and their genius plan is for Sally to sneak out of the house wearing a ski mask and to stay away from the house. Well, I don’t have a smarter plan, so we’ll go with that for now.

At the funeral home, Sally (wearing an unusually skin-hiding outfit) approaches a distant Max about staying with him for a few days. He admits he’s jealous she can talk to her roommates about the intimate details of her life. He also doesn’t understand why they can’t go to dinner or the movies. The best explanation Sally can muster is that there are some things that she can’t ask him to deal with. Really, what else can she say without completely freaking him out and running him off? Don’t do that, Sally, let’s keep Max around; he adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the show. Actually, I know what he adds, but no need to spell it out. You either get it or you don’t.

Sally sneaks back home to get more clothes, but despite her efforts, runs into Robbie. Sally enlists Josh to go back to Donna’s with her, where Sally threatens Donna but is easily incapacitated by her. Donna offers Sally a deal: your brother will be safe and you can safely see people from your past, all for the small price of your soul, payable in three easy installments.  Donna doesn’t reveal what she plans to do with Sally’s soul upon receipt.

Sally finds Robbie again, and they speak briefly. Robbie’s stint as landlord was a scam to get a few bucks before he heads to Florida where he has some bigger, better deal waiting for him. You know the type, right? Sally gives him her last sixty bucks, then heads to the funeral home to patch things up with Max, who pouts that she never came back to his place after getting clothes. Max relents when Sally gives him a “no crazies” guarantee. Thanks a lot, Sally, I know what my husband will be requesting for his birthday, and I’m not sure I can deliver. In any case, they reconcile, smooch a lot, and generally make all of us anxious for their next cooking show.

Aidan, meanwhile, reluctantly returns to work after following his teeth-baring incident with Kenny. Kenny, of course, isn’t about to ignore what transpired, so they engage in Q & A, where Kenny’s best question is whether Aidan sparkles (he doesn’t). Kenny also asks Aidan how he became a vampire, and finally!, we are off on the four-episode flashback arc that Sam Witwer and Anna Fricke promised us just before the season began (article here).

As an American member of the Revolutionary War, Aidan stumbles onto Bishop in his vampiric glory in the woods. It’s your classic “solider meets vampire, fights vampire, gets bitten by vampire, and turns” love story. A nit though: I’m intrigued/bothered by the accents that Pellegrino and Witwer affect during these scenes. Not having lived during the American Revolution, I can’t speak to what the prevailing accent of the day was, but it’s odd to the ear and distracting. Both those guys are such strong actors, however, that I must give them the benefit of the doubt.

Where the heck was Nora this episode? I’m not complaining much because Nora has gotten crabby and bossy, but somebody needs to run interference with Erin, the most obnoxious fifteen year old on the planet. It’s teens like her that give teens a bad name. She’s an invasive slob with no consideration for anyone other than herself, and both Josh and Aidan are way too easy on her. Can you tell I don’t like her?

In last week’s episode, Liam brought Erin back home to Nora and Josh. “Gosh,” I thought, “That was uncharacteristically nice of him.” I should have taken that thought just one step further: “What do you have up your sleeve, Liam?” I admit, it was a miss on my part, because when Liam found Erin, he made Erin a part of his pack and his secret weapon. Her mission, which she accepted, was to re-insert herself back into the household, find Aidan’s food source, and contaminate it with her own poisonous blood.

I get how that plan’s good in theory, but Aidan has drunk werewolf blood before; he’s drunk Kenny’s blood before; and he’s got a super-sensitive sniffer, right? If Bishop could smell the men from Aidan’s encampment a half mile away, then non-sparkly vampires have sensitive sniffers. So why couldn’t Aidan tell there was something off with the bouquet of Kenny’s blood? Aidan downs two vials of Kenny’s blood before reacting to the poison. It appears he ingested less werewolf blood in those two vials than he did drinking straight from Josh’s wrist last season, so the poisoning should in theory be recoverable if logic holds. But despicable Erin stands over the choking and bleeding Aidan, who has been nothing but nice to her ever, with a sharpened stake. Liam races to the scene in his Range Rover to finish the job.

So many questions at the end of this episode: How will my boy Aidan get out of this one? Will Erin suffer a horrible, excruciating, torturous death (is it wrong to hope)? What will happen to Liam? Will Josh walk in on all this and have time to react? Will Nora side with Josh and Aidan or with Erin and Liam? (Never mind, I think I already know the answer, and I’m preemptively mad about it.) What happened to Aidan’s two ghost lady friends? What will be the fate of Sally’s soul? Donna ate Trent flakes a couple of episodes ago, and got her youth and beauty back; how come her face now looks like mine again? When and how will Robbie pop back into the picture? Kenny asked Aidan to turn him and threatened to leave his glass cage on his eighteenth birthday regardless; will Aidan perform this as an act of kindness to this young man? When are we getting more dance scenes? I demand more dance scenes! And what will Sally gorge on next week? May I suggest bacon pancakes?

See you guys next week. In the meantime, I wish you all peace, love, and French Toast with orange zest!

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